Emily Ratajkowsi has opened up about the importance she says her parents placed on beauty when she was growing up.

In an excerpt from her upcoming book, My Body, The New York Post reported that the now-30-year-old model-turned-actress felt that her beauty made her seem more "special" to her parents.

According to the paper, the I Feel Pretty star shared that her mother, Kathy, proclaimed to her doctor who delivered Emily: "She's beautiful!"

Her mom continued, according to the excerpt: "The next day he brought his children to the hospital just to see you. You were such a beautiful baby."

Emily, who grew up an only child in San Diego, was told stories that revealed her mother had once been a striking beauty herself.

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Kathy, who worked as an English teacher, allegedly shared tales of "adoring boys standing on the lawn below her bedroom window in high school" and jealous peers who felt threatened by her remarkable beauty.

Emily writes in her book: "I tried to gauge where my parents thought I belonged in the world of beauties. It seemed important to them both, especially to my mother, that their daughter be perceived as beautiful."

At night, Emily said, her mother would pray that God would make her daughter "the most beautiful."

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"Beauty was a way for me to be special," she explained. "When I was special, I felt my parents’ love for me the most."

When she was just 14, Emily started modeling auditions, and she recalled how her father, a high school art teacher, proudly displayed her modeling "comp" card, which comprised her headshots and measurements, in his classroom.

Emily recalled wearing a pair of stretchy jeans and chunky black boots at her first audition.

Her mom, who was in the waiting room with her, told Emily to flip her hair when it was her turn to audition with the casting directors.

According to the model, when she was in the car with her mom, driving from the audition in Los Angeles back home to San Diego, Kathy told her young daughter: "That boy looked at you when you stood up and flipped your hair. He was watching you."

Featured image credit: REUTERS / Alamy

Emily Ratajkowsi says it was important to her parents 'that their daughter was perceived as beautiful'